What Kestrion sends, and where

In short

• Your profile, ships, fleets, saves and settings stay on your own computer.
• We run no analytics and no advertising, in the game or on this site.
• Our own server (the relay and the lobby list) keeps no internet addresses and nothing that names you.
• Like any download or website, the services the game talks to (GitHub, Cloudflare, public Nostr relays) can see your internet address while they answer.

This website

No cookies, no analytics, no trackers, and nothing loaded from other sites: the fonts and pictures are served from here. The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which sees your internet address to deliver the pages, as any web host does. The Beta code you type is checked in your own browser and never sent anywhere. The download buttons fetch the game straight from our release storage on GitHub, which sees your internet address, as with any download.

Update checks

An update check is one plain download of a small file from our release page on GitHub. It sends nothing about you; GitHub sees your internet address, as with any download. You can switch update checks off in Settings > Updates.

Multiplayer

Direct games

Kestrion connects players directly to each other (peer to peer). In a direct game, the players you connect to can see your internet address, as in most peer-to-peer games.

Hide my IP and our relay

With Hide my IP on, your connection goes through a relay (Cloudflare's, reached through our own small server), so other players only see the relay's address. Each side hides only its own address. If the relay is not available, the game refuses to connect rather than quietly connecting directly. Games from the public lobby list always use the relay, for everyone.

Our server hands out short-lived relay passes. To stop abuse it limits how many each player can take, without keeping your address: players are told apart by a scrambled form of the address (a keyed hash) whose key is replaced every day and the old one deleted. IPv6 addresses are counted per network (/64), so one home counts once. Nothing is logged, and the server's logging is switched off.

The public lobby list

A public lobby's listing holds only: the lobby name, the host's name and tag, the map, mode and rules, how many seats are taken on each team (no guest names), whether it is locked, the game version, and the host's continent. Never an address, never a password. A listing disappears about a minute after the host stops hosting. Lobby passwords are checked between the players' games, never by our server. A listing is signed with the host's profile key, so lobbies by the same host can be linked over time, as the name and tag on them already can.

Join codes, invites and profile links

Short join codes and profile links meet through public Nostr relays (servers run by other people). What passes through them is encrypted. Those relays can see your internet address, as any website can.

Discord status

The desktop game can show "Playing Kestrion" on your Discord profile. It is off unless you switch it on, and it talks only to the Discord app on your own computer.

Out-of-sync reports

If a multiplayer match falls out of sync, the game saves a small .kdesync report on your computer. It is only ever sent if you send it to us yourself.

Questions

Write to lockstepinteractive@gmail.com, or ask on our Discord.

Changes

If any of this changes, this page changes first. Last updated: 3 November 2026.